Power Conferences and the New Role of Olympic Sports (2024)

Post: #1

IMO, the proposed House settlement is going to have a big impact on Olympic sports because power conference universities will be forced to share revenues with student-athletes.

To provide perspective on the current state of support for Olympic sports, the following scatter-plot details the number of sponsored teams (Y-axis, from Wikipedia posts of P4 conferences) and 5-year average Directors Cup points (X-axis, 2019-2024 actual results).

CSN1.png (Size: 51.06 KB / Downloads: 58)

In terms of earning the most points, the top 10 most successful programs have been 1) Stanford, 2) Texas, 3) Florida, 4) Michigan, 5) UNC, 6) Ohio State, 7) UVa, 8) USC, 9) LSU and 10) Arkansas...showing broad representation from the nSEC (4 schools), nACC (3) and nB1G (3).

In terms of efficiency (most points per sponsored team), the top 10 most successful programs have been 1) Texas, 2) Florida, 3) Arkansas, 4) Tennessee, 5) FSU, 6) LSU, 7) Oklahoma State, 8) UGA, 9) TAMU and 10) USC...this list is dominated by the nSEC, with one representative from each of the other power conferences. As the importance of money grows, the SEC model towards Olympic sports should become more common.

Post: #2

(07-03-2024 02:01 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: IMO, the proposed House settlement is going to have a big impact on Olympic sports because power conference universities will be forced to share revenues with student-athletes.

To provide perspective on the current state of support for Olympic sports, the following scatter-plot details the number of sponsored teams (Y-axis, from Wikipedia posts of P4 conferences) and 5-year average Directors Cup points (X-axis, 2019-2024 actual results).

In terms of earning the most points, the top 10 most successful programs have been 1) Stanford, 2) Texas, 3) Florida, 4) Michigan, 5) UNC, 6) Ohio State, 7) UVa, 8) USC, 9) LSU and 10) Arkansas...showing broad representation from the nSEC (4 schools), nACC (3) and nB1G (3).

In terms of efficiency (most points per sponsored team), the top 10 most successful programs have been 1) Texas, 2) Florida, 3) Arkansas, 4) Tennessee, 5) FSU, 6) LSU, 7) Oklahoma State, 8) UGA, 9) TAMU and 10) USC...this list is dominated by the nSEC, with one representative from each of the other power conferences. As the importance of money grows, the SEC model towards Olympic sports should become more common.